Saturday, 14 December 2013

Sepia Saturday 207: Happy Days at Blackpool

I'm back after a fifteen week break from Sepia Saturday, during which time I visited England, France, Spain and California, and walked the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrim route stretching for just under a thousand kilometres across northern Spain, from St Jean Pied de Port to Santiago de Compostela and Finisterre. I was also delighted to meet and spend a day getting to know charming and genial fellow Sepians Little Nell and Caminante. Marilyn wrote of our exploring the enchanting city of Burgos together in Beguiled by Burgos. I'm very grateful that she and John went somewhat out of their way to facilitate this very successful meeting of like minds, and hope that we can do it again some time, somewhere.

Writing an article or two about the trip, which may include a few carefully selected photographs from my walk through historic northern Spain, will have to wait for when I have more time. This week I'd like to share some more images from a collection of glass plate and sheet film negatives that I've featured before here on Photo-Sleuth: SS179: Fun on the Sands - The Pleasure Palaces of Southport and SS188: The Cornwall Coast in Colour. The first of these two articles dealt with photographs taken by an amateur photographer during a visit to Southport, Lancashire, probably in 1913 or 1914.

It was on a similar trip, probably at around the same time, that the photographer took several scenes of the seaside attractions of Blackpool. It may even have been during the same trip; he or she might have taken a passage there on one of the steam boats from the end of Southport Pier. There are five negatives of views identified as from Blackpool, three of which I've included here.

This negative shows evidence of "in camera" light leakage or over-exposure along the left hand edge, and is suffering the ravages of time in the form of oxidation or silvering of the photographic emulsion, but the main part of the image is still in good condition. The view is of the Central Pier with the Blackpool Tower, theatre building, Ferris Wheel and Promenade from left to right, taken at low tide from a point on the beach a couple of hundred metres south of the pier.

I don't yet know who the photographer was, but he or she was no slouch when it came to recording holiday trips. By the second decade of the twentieth century, not only were there cheaper and easier roll film cameras (box and folding) available, rather than the fiddly plate or cartridge-backed model he used, but this was also the heyday of the picture postcard. The selection included in the slideshow above are typical of the large range of views which were readily available for visitors to purchase, and give a good impression the wide variety of activities available at the Blackpool waterfront.

In this large collection there are also two negatives depicting illuminated night scenes. Using postcards from that era, both are identifiable as having been taken at Pleasure Beach in Blackpool. I previously wrote about Charles Howell operating a photographic studio at Pleasure Beach between the two World Wars. Pictured in the negatives are a Rainbow Wheel, the Scenic Railway, the Helter Skelter Lighthouse (all above) and the Casino (below).

A series of contemporary postcards shows the same attractions, both by day and by night. In 1879 Blackpool became the first municipality in the world to have electric street lights installed, along the Promenade. The accompanying pageants were the forerunner of the town's famous Illuminations.

Fun on the Sands, 1914

I've also found several silent movie clips from 1914, 1926 and 1934 which give a very good feel for the various attractions on Blackpool's waterfront. The first clip, Fun on the Sands, includes the Senic Railway ride and a panning shot of the Rainbow Wheel, built in 1912, and the Helter Skelter Lighthouse. For further details of the rides and other attractions, click through the links to the YouTube web site.

Happy Days at Blackpool 1926 (Part 1)

Happy Days at Blackpool 1926 (Part 2)

Blackpool Illuminations 1934

This brings me to a small request to fellow Saturday Sepians and other regular readers of this blog. I am have started a small project studying seaside photography in Blackpool, and am looking for as wide a variety of seaside portraits as I can find. If you have any in your family or personal collections that you'd care to share, I would very much appreciate scans of them, please.

In particular, I'm looking for the following types of photographs:

any early daguerreotypes, ambrotypes or tintypes taken in Blackpool

formal portraits from any of Blackpool's numerous studios, from the 1840s/1850s through to the present day, including ambrotypes, tintypes, cartes de visite, cabinet cards, postcards and a variety of paper print formats

portraits taken by itinerant beach photographers, of relaxing on the beach, playing games or riding the ever present donkeys

walking pictures, also known as "walkies," taken by professional street photographers, perhaps taken along the Promenade or elsewhere in Blackpool

amateur photographs taken on or near to Blackpool's piers or beaches, particularly those with recognisable landmarks in the background, such as one of the piers, the tower, or fairground attractions.

They don't have to be wonderful quality - there are several other aspects of the photographs that I'm interested in, more than having spectacular examples of the genre. Permission would of course be sought if I wanted to use any of the images online or in a publication, and all such use would be fully acknowledged. If you have any photos that you think might be of interest, please leave a comment below with contact details or email me.

For more sepian delights I can recommend a visit to the remainder of this week's Sepia Saturday contributers.

24 comments:

Welcome back, Brett. I presume you did not walk the whole 1000 km. Enjoying the Blackpool videos - but have not checked them all yet. I believe that I was taken there once as a child but remember none of it.

Appreciate your welcome back, Helen, thank you. I haven't quite decided what format I'm going to use to report on my pilgrimage - perhaps a photobook with a few words. I'm inspired by the SS200 book, which arrivd in the post yesterday. I already posted a selection of photos to Facebook while I was walking, so if you fancy browsing those just send me a friend request.

Sounds like an inspiring adventure, Brett, so I add my welcome too. Your post is quite the daytrip holiday as I feel my head is spinning from that tour of Blackpool amusements. All these videos were wonderful and I enjoyed some others I found from Blackpool History which uploaded these terrific restorations. Did you notice that the first one with the clowns was made on 31st July 1914?

I especially liked the video from Blackpool History: Blackpool in 1899.mp4 - which was more a slide show of an old guide book. It was full of interesting details and photos on this fantasyland.

My wife's father was from Blackpool so I will check with her and family to look for anything that fits with your seaside theme.

Thank you Mike - an inspiring trip indeed, but it's good to be back, and I'm looking for a different kind of inspiration to get back into blogging again. I had to stop myself from getting distracted with all those Blackpool History clips or I would never have posted my SS contribution in time - perhaps another time.

Thank you for your very kind words Brett - we had a wonderful time in Burgos with you - the highlight of our holiday! I enjoyed the trip to Blackpool too. John was born in Lancaster so Blackpool is known to him. I have a picture of me taken in Blackpool about forty years ago, but I don’t think that’s quite what you’re after :)

Welcome back. Will look forward to reading about your visits & experiences in so many different places on your extended vacation when you share them. Out of curiosity, what part of Calif. did you visit? The Blackpool photos & videos are very interesting to me because one of my novelettes takes place there. The time-line, however, is in the 1890's - a little earlier than your photos, & much of the information I could dig up online about Blackpool during that time was on the sketchy side. The story isn't published yet, though, so I'm still researching.

Thanks Gail, it's good to be home again. I was in San Francisco for a few days, and also very briefly in Bakersfield, San Diego and Los Angeles, all with friends - a very rushed visit, and I hope to be back there to do a better job of it in the not too distant future. Good luck with your novelette.

Yosemite was, and still is, at the top of my list. Unfortunately I just didn't have the time to get there - California is HUGE. I was brought up on images of the place in National Geographic, and this stereo photo and this of Roosevelt and John Muir at Glacier Point are among my favourite ever shots.

Thanks for the pictures. I have a photo of my grandfather sitting out at the end of that rock ledge at Glacier Point. And yes, Calif. is pretty big. I had to measure it in area against Scotland for a story I was writing once & was amazed to discover all of Britain plus an extra Scotland would fit inside California. You should also see Lake Tahoe if you ever get the chance. Of course that's half in Nevada, but oh well.

Welcome back, and what a wonderful trip you had. Marvelous that you could meet with Little Nell and hubby, how interesting of a journey you shared. Someday I'd really enjoy taking such a long adventure.

Thank you Lorraine. I missed reading all of your Sepia Saturday entries each week too. Although I had a tablet with me, and plenty of internet access via "weefee," walking and talking took up so much time, there wasn't a lot of opportunity to read. Plenty of memories indeed, and I'm contemplating some kind of photobook to keep those memories fresh - yet another consumer of time.